Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: When an international crisis disappears in 48 hours, you've succeeded.

Alexander Ward/POLITICO:

‘No one wants to escalate things’

If the chest-beating ends, so too might the latest Middle Eastern crisis.

If the dam of silence holds, it’s possible tensions won’t flood over into more regional fighting.

“This was far from being the ‘devastating’ retaliation promised by so many in the Israeli War Cabinet,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “Iran’s swift denial of any attack could well be designed to shut this door, too, but time will tell whether Iran’s proxies are folded into that equation.”

A senior unnamed Iranian official told Reuters there were no plans to retaliate, a signal that the back-and-forth strikes could end here.

When you manage a crisis into a non-story, you’ve done a hell of a job. Of course, it’s the Middle East, so it’s never over.

David Rothkopf/Daily Beast:

Iran’s Nuclear Program Could Speed Up After Strikes With Israel

This week’s attacks between Iran and Israel didn’t cause much damage, but they have moved the region closer to a nuclear confrontation.

There are many creatures in the animal kingdom—from weasels to spotted skunks to ostriches—that perform a dance to intimidate their enemies.

This week, we saw generals in both Israel and Iran perform their own weasel dances. They made a great show, flexed their muscles in the most visible possible way, and did so with the apparent objective of sending a message to their adversaries.

Don’t sleep on this one. The House Freedom Caucus Republicans aren’t the only Russian assets in this world.. CBS News:

Germany arrests 2 alleged Russian spies accused of scouting U.S. military facilities for sabotage

Berlin — German authorities say they have arrested two people suspected of spying for Russia. The suspects, identified as German-Russian nationals, are accused of scouting targets for potential attacks, including U.S. military facilities in Germany, the Federal Public Prosecutor General for Karlsruhe said in a statement released Thursday.

The arrests, made by police in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth, come amid high tension between Russia and the West, more than two years after President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The alleged spies' stand accused by Germany of working to undermine the military support provided to Ukraine by Germany.

Greg Sargent/TNR:

Mike Johnson’s Shockingly Pro-Ukraine Speech Really Sticks It to MAGA

The House speaker’s comments wrecked one of the far right’s most ridiculous, reprehensible tropes.

Johnson’s new stance has attracted a good deal of positive attention. But I want to highlight an aspect of it that’s been overlooked because it’s an important tell about the true state of MAGA ideology and what it’s demanding of Republicans these days.

“I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten,” Johnson said, in a moment that became a mini-speech. “I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed. I think he might go to the Balkans next. I think he might have a showdown with Poland, or one of our NATO allies.” If so, he added, we might find ourselves sending troops to defend allies from Putin later.

Did we really hear the speaker say that he believes what our intelligence services have told him about the long-term consequences of cutting off aid to Ukraine?

This is a direct challenge to the MAGA worldview in multiple ways. Johnson is treating Putin as the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and acknowledging his broader imperialist designs, which is heresy to some MAGA Republicans. But he’s also flatly declaring that on these matters, the deep state is very much to be believed.

POLITICO Playbook:

THE NEW HOUSE RULES — Welcome to coalition government. At least for the moment and on this one key issue — aid to three important U.S. allies facing varying degrees of threats from their neighbors — the House of Representatives is controlled by a fragile, bipartisan, de facto power-sharing agreement.

While Speaker MIKE JOHNSON has relied on Democrats in the past, what happened in the Rules Committee late last night was different.

Rules is known as “the Speaker’s committee,” a powerful body usually made up of members hand-picked by leadership that serves as gatekeeper to the House floor. But Johnson inherited a Rules Committee stacked with hard-liners, a vestige of the wheeling and dealing it took for KEVIN McCARTHY to win the speakership last year.

Rep. TOM COLE (R-Okla.), the recently departed chairman of Rules, defended the arrangement during a long interview in his office yesterday for this week’s Deep Dive podcast. Placing the far-right troublemakers on the committee, the thinking goes, would allow them to be heard early in the process so that spats get worked out before rules ever reach the floor.

It hasn’t worked out that way: Seven rules have been defeated on the floor in this Congress after passing in committee. What was once the ultimate act of party betrayal in the House became routine in this GOP conference.

POLITICO:

How Johnson and Biden locked arms on Ukraine

The planned vote on a foreign aid package is validation of a White House strategy to court the speaker behind the scenes while letting him find his own path.

The intelligence, shown to lawmakers last week and described by two members who have seen it, built on weeks of reports that have alarmed members of Congress and Biden administration officials. On Thursday, CIA Director William Burns warned that, barring more U.S. aid, Ukraine “could lose on the battlefield by the end of 2024.”

It heightened the sense of urgency surrounding a White House effort to convince Johnson to hold a public vote on Ukraine aid that has dragged on behind the scenes since the day he became speaker. Johnson had resisted for months in the face of growing threats to his speakership if he sided with Biden and allowed the vote.

Huh. Maybe this Dark Brandon guy is on to something beyond vibes.

Jennifer Bendery/HuffPost:

In Madison, College Students Say They’re Voting For Biden. Mostly For 1 Reason.

Wisconsin will be pivotal to winning the presidential election in November. Here's how Trump and Biden are doing with young voters there.

Biden’s latest visit here was also an attempt to show people who are six decades younger than him that he’s listening to their concerns. At 81, he’s faced months of scrutiny over his age and mental acuity. Trump has faced questions about his mental competency, too. But a March poll by The New York Times and Siena College showed voters more concerned about Biden’s age, even though Trump isn’t far behind at 77.

For college-aged voters in Madison, though, this didn’t seem like a dealbreaker.

“It does concern me, but it also doesn’t,” said Mack, 21, who is from Madison and planning to vote for Biden. “I wouldn’t be like, ‘Oh, that’s the reason I’m not voting for him.’”

And even if they weren’t invited to his student loan event, at least some students were paying attention to what Biden is doing on this front.

His student debt relief plans “absolutely” resonate, said Yaakov, a 21-year-old from Minneapolis. “I got a scholarship, but if I didn’t I would be $180,000 in debt.”

Even though he doesn’t have loans, “My brother, my friends, a lot of people I know are drowning in debt right now,” he added. “I got insanely lucky. Thank god someone is taking on this issue.”

The Trump trial starts Monday. These next six weeks will be wild.

Cliff Schecter on Marjorie Taylor Greene’s latest nutty conspiracy theory: